Immigration and my grandfather

I'm not entirely sure where my grandfather stand politically. He used to send me all of these email basically saying "Look at how bad immigrants are! Close our borders! Kick them out!" Being a teacher of immigrants and having many immigrant friends, I asked my grandfather politely to please stop sending me such emails. For the most part, he has complied with my wishes. He still forwards me many things, most of which I enjoy. He sent me a very powerful email this morning about being grateful for everything that we have, showing pictures of those less fortunate. It showed pictures of people from third world countries starving, working at extremely young and old ages, parentless children and many more. It was a fantastic email, so why do I bring it up here? Because of who sent it!

I severely want to write an email back to my grandfather saying: Don't you see? If you lived in these conditions, wouldn't you do everything in your power to get out of them? Even if that meant travelling to another country illegally? Wouldn't you do anything to give your children a chance to have a better childhood than you had? Wouldn't you do that for them?

I know the purpose of the email had nothing to do with immigration, but that was all I could see in it. Now that I think about it, it is a rather selfish email for someone who wants to close our borders to immigrants. It says: "We should be thankful that we're not like them, but let's not help them!"

I agree that our immigration system is broken in this country. Hundreds of women a year cross the border from Mexico into southern California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas just to give birth so their children can be United States citizens. We are one of the only countries that allows every baby born here to become citizens, regardless of citizenship of parents. This would be a good starting point for immigration reform!

Why shouldn't we just send them all back to their country of origin? Well, it would cost a lot of money and we'd be losing a lot of low paid physical workers. Yes, there are certain areas that would be affected by this more than others. But in some areas, many businesses would go belly-up if they lost their immigrant workers.

Plus, it's not like our government just finds illegal immigrants and ships them home. I had a close friend who came here legally, but over-stayed his visa. He was working illegally and got caught. He spent months in prison before they sent him home! We already have over-crowded prisons, I imagine they would overflow if we started putting more and more illegal immigrants in them for months before they got deported!

I know we are a selfish nation! Why else would we think it is perfectly fine to go to war for oil? (I know that wasn't the main public reason, but that's what it boils down to, right?) Why else would everyone be bitching about gas prices, when they are still lower than most of the world's gas prices have been for years? Why else would we still see thousands of SUVs on the road, despite the high gas prices?

I know, I'm a little off topic...back to immigration. All I wish is that people would think through every facet of this issue in a non-selfish way. Think about what it means for the immigrants. If they have to go back to their country will they be persecuted? murdered? or merely not be able provide as good a life as in the U.S.?